Hi.

Welcome to my blog. I live in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle on an Urban Farm (w/ five laying hens and a huge garden). I am a trained chef (w/ a certificate in food preservation), taught at a cooking school & like to share 'kitchen hacks' - culinary tips that save time, money & maximize flavor. If that isn't enough, I also run a food+tech startup called Barn2Door.com - a platform to help everyone easily find & buy food directly from farmers, fishers & ranchers (from CSA's to urban farm eggs to 1/2 a grass-fed cow).

Oct 9 Boston begets chocolate

We snuck in a brief trip to Boston, Massachusetts last week. It has been our goal to steal the kids away and go explore the great city of Boston. And I must say, it was far too short a trip to take in this history rich, fall-embracing, food wise, grownup city. We really only had a few days, and managed to walk the Freedom Walk, drive Memorial Drive and visit the Museum of Science: wow.

And the hotel was fabulously GREEN. And I don't mean just the color palate (well, that too, plus whites and charcoals and a smidgen of taupe). It was a great experience for our kids to see what a GREEN hotel meant, from a double flushing toilet (seriously a button for light flush and one for a full flush, to conserve water). And shampoo and soap dispensers in the shower so as not to waste a million little plastic bottles, plus energy efficient lighting and instead of bottled water, faucets with purified water. It was inspiring, and with as many hotels as their are in the world... we were especially aware since my son's school project asks 'what can we do to effect our environment positively?' In this case 'we' was this hotel: please take this moment to applaud.

Of course, I could talk about the hotel, or the fact that we saw John Hancock's and Paul Revere's graves, or marched the Freedom Trail---starting at Boston Common---where soldiers marched before us. And I could tell you how inspiring it was to drive by Harvard and MIT and see north Boston which is thick in Italian heritage (with hazelnut gelato to die for). But really I mean to mention The Cheese Shop that we tucked into while in Concord, MA. (No doubt it is more important that Emerson lived there, and Waldon Pond and Sleepy Hollow are famous visiting sites).

It was pouring rain and we were due for a good sandwich, As we surreptitiously made our way through the streets of Concord, somewhere between the pouring rain and pangs of hunger, we ducked under a yellow awning... with the big embolden word CHEESE on it: who were we to resist? Sandwiches quickly consumed, we let our eyes feast on the vast array of wines and cheeses and all sorts of chocolates and goodies to try. We felt obliged to scoop up a small collection of untried chocolates. These 2 were our favorites, SO worth ordering if you want to try them too:

It took me about a day and a half to realize this brief visit would not do justice to Boston; clearly, we will need to return and tour more, dig deeper into its history, visit the Tea Party ship (to reopen summer 2009) and of course, land in unexpected cheese shops to find cheese, wine... and chocolate!